Breathing apparatus (BA) are routinely used in environments where there is no breathable air and in emergency situations where the availability or quality of air is not guaranteed. For example, in underground mines in an emergency situation workers are required to put in a BA as part of the emergency protocol.
Filling stations are required to refill the BAs so that they are ready for use and in situations where the BA is in use and must be refilled. Filling stations ordinarily fill BAs with compressed air (CA); giving rise to the term CABA (Compressed Air Breathing Apparatus). The term SCBA (Self-Contained Breathing Apparatus) may also be used to refer to the same or similar type of equipment. Therefore, for the purposes of the present discussion, these terms are used interchangeably. CABA/SCBA equipment has limited capacity in use, typically providing about an hour's worth of air before being depleted. Therefore, in some environments, multiple refills of CABA/SCBA equipment may be required while workers travel to safety, and therefore multiple filling stations may be provided at specified locations along an emergency escape-way or escape route. Furthermore, in some environments, there may be both a primary escape-way and secondary escape-way to provide redundant escape-ways and improve the chances of successfully escaping from an emergency situation. However, as these filling stations operate as stand-alone units, if only escape-way is used, the filling stations in that escape-way may be depleted quickly, while other filling stations in another escape-way may remain unused but unavailable.
Therefore, what is needed is an improved filling station system to address some of the limitations of existing filling station devices.